If your doctor gave you a prescription to improve your health, and it made you deathly ill, would you follow said doctor’s orders to take ever-increasing dosages?

Of course you wouldn’t. You’d label the doctor either an incompetent quack or an unscrupulous shill for the pharmaceutical company; you’d stop taking medicine that was killing you, and you’d seek alternative treatment.

It’s all so obvious: you believe that something will be beneficial, so you give it a try, but once your experience proves that your faith was misplaced — you dummy up. You learn from your mistake and move forward a wiser person.

So, why is it that what seems so obvious in a healthcare scenario, and would also apply without exception if dealing with a mechanic, a lawyer, a contractor, or pretty much anyone else, somehow winds up being lost entirely in the world of politics?

More to the point: how is it possible, after experiencing the catastrophic results of conservative economic policy, that there’s a single American (who’s not either a Republican politician or some other member of the Top 1%) still willing to give the GOP Rx for the economy another nanosecond of consideration?

When King Solomon said that “there is nothing new under the sun,” he couldn’t possibly have done a better job at describing GOP economic policy. From the plans being offered by the illustrious ranks of Republican presidential candidates to those recently articulated by House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, their prescription is nothing but more of the same poison that crashed the American economy, blew unemployment up to historic levels, and fueled concentration of wealth not seen since the Great Depression.

The GOP Rx for the economy is ever-static and never works. Whether you’re talking decades ago or focused on today, it always consists of the same triple threat to the American people: cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate, and privatize government along with the commons. They wrap their rhetoric up in a flag, label their plan as “job creating,” and somehow manage to sell the same warmed-over economic Vioxx time and again.

The truth of the matter is that we’ve already tried every element of the Republican plan, all to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans.

According to the GOP, we must lower taxes on the wealthy (a.k.a. the “job creators”) in order to address unemployment. Of course, tax rates today are at record lows with the total income tax burden at its lowest point since 1950 — a fact that begs the question, “Why don’t we already have the jobs?”

Well, the answer is that lowering taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. It never has and never will, yet whenever the opportunity arises, the GOP snake oil dealers come out of the woodwork offering the same poisonous tonic. Bush did it in 2001, promising 800,000 jobs from his Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, but the $1.6 trillion tax cut, that gave fully half of the savings to the Top 1%, didn’t actually create any jobs. In fact, following the cuts, we lost 2.7 million jobs by May of 2003.

In contrast, Bill Clinton had the unmitigated gall to raise taxes on the rich, which if GOP prognosticators were right should have been a death knell for job creation. But instead of the Republican predictions of an apocalypse, of a market collapse and dire straits for the economy, we entered into the most prosperous peacetime economy in American history. BLS records show that 22.7 million jobs were created under President Clinton and a paltry 1.08 million under George W. Bush. It seems pretty obvious which president had the better prescription for the American economy.

Once all of the hype is pushed aside, it’s plain to see that tax cuts for the rich have little to do with job creation and instead achieve only the one thing that the average person might expect — they make the rich even richer. They lead to the banana republic style distribution of wealth that now has the U.S. ranking 98^th amongst 136 nations measured by the Gini index of income inequality — worse than Iran — worse than freaking China! But what can you expect when our top 1% now holds more financial wealth than the bottom 95% of the population?

So, maybe the GOP is wrong about tax cuts but right about deregulation. Maybe present calls to repeal Dodd-Frank to “free up Wall St.” are just the prescription for prosperity we need. Maybe there is validity in Michelle Bachmann’s claim that financial reform is “killing the banking industry.” And maybe Sarah Palin will actually run for president, there really is an Easter Bunny, and the GOP truly does give a fat flying flip about working Americans.

The deregulation story is actually scarier than the tax cut myth. It was deregulation that gave birth to the derivative market, allowed unfettered access to credit default swaps, tore down the barrier between investment and commercial banking, and created the Wall St. casino that bled the middle class for 30% of their combined wealth and sent unemployment to levels not seen since the last tax cutting, deregulating, military spending GOP buffoon, Ronald Reagan, sent the rate over 10%.

It was George W. Bush’s dismantling of the regulatory structure that gave us the housing bubble and subsequent economic collapse, allowed the Massey Mine disaster to kill 29 people, and laid the ground work of incompetence that led to the BP oil spill.

Republican style deregulation strips government of its power to carry out it moral mission to protect the people and replaces it with a charade of profit-focused companies pretending to police themselves. It assigns henhouse security to the fox by binding and gagging the farmer. It leads to companies monitoring safety requirements, as it did at Big Branch and in the Gulf, and leaves drug testing to the pharmaceutical companies, as was the case with Merck and their Vioxx pain reliever that caused tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes, and killed nearly 3,500 Americans.

There are no doubt regulations that do place an unnecessary burden on businesses, and they should be addressed, but they are in the minority. Most regulations serve a vital purpose to protect the citizenry from those who would exploit people and planet in order to add to their bottom line.

Government regulation is as necessary as our system of criminal and civil law. It ensures the safety of our food, infrastructure, medicine, energy, transportation system, consumer products, water supply, and workplace — without regulation we cannot have a functional society. Regulatory reform may indeed be essential, but it must be accomplished intelligently and without compromise that sacrifices the moral mission in exchange for the profit motive. Such reform cannot be achieved through GOP “starve the beast” tactics, where funding for the FDA, SEC, FAA or FEMA and OSHA are indiscriminately cut, nor will it happen through attacks on unions, the NRLB or the EPA as proposed by Eric “Corporate Shill” Cantor and his ignorant mob of Tea Party ideologues.

The Republican plan for America is simple: starve government of necessary funding, cripple government by axing regulations, and turn whatever’s left of government over to private enterprise to milk for profits. They ignore the reality that our economy is stalled because of lack of demand stemming from concentration of wealth not seen since the Great Depression. They ignore science, clutching onto the desperate notion that 98% of climate scientists are wrong about global warming in order to justify their loyal support of fossil fuels. And they ignore the selfish drain on the economy presented by the Wall St. casino and fat-cat government contractors who provide services at rates averaging 183% of the costs to simply hire federal workers.

Sadly, none of this matters to the GOP. When facts get in their way, they just invent another marketing phrase, regurgitate more of their distorted talking points, and spin their poison in populist labels like “liberty” and “freedom.” But in spite of their flag waving and lip service for working Americans, the truth of the GOP is that their core mantra remains “government is the problem,” and they will stop at nothing to deliver on their self-fulfilling prophesy.

Make no mistake about it, the GOP Rx is effective. The problem is that the America it’s intended to serve is comprised of only the top 1 to 2% of Americans. The strength of our nation depends upon both a strong democracy and a healthy capitalist economy. Sadly, the Republican Party is willing to trample the rights of the People and decimate that democracy in order to feed the greed of the economic elite.

Americans need to wake up before it’s too late. They need to smell the burning apple pie, and realize that the parasitic capitalist machine is killing its host. Republicans may still talk about jobs and small business, but it should be obvious to the most casual observer that high unemployment and the lower wages it brings are nirvana for GOP strategists, and real small business is anathema for their vision of an American corporatocracy.

The GOP Rx for our economy deserves a grade of “D” for “Death” of the American Dream. And any working American who subscribes to their prescription and believes that the policies that are destroying the middle class will somehow magically start producing a different result deserves a great big “F” for “Fucking Insane!”

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Milwaukee’s ordinance requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave would be voided under a bill Assembly Republicans sent Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday.

Walker said he is likely to sign the measure. The city’s sick leave ordinance was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2008 but has never gone into effect because of legal challenges. The Assembly voted 59-35 to ensure it would never be implemented.

Patrick Marley, Journal Sentinel

Article first published as The War on Working Americans and the Battle of Wisconsin on Technorati.

First they came for the factory jobs, but Americans didn’t speak out, because most didn’t work in factories.

Then they came for the construction jobs, but again Americans didn’t speak out, because they didn’t work in construction either.

Then they came for the public employee jobs, and some Americans did speak out, but others fought against their efforts, because they believed that their fellow American workers were to blame for unbalanced budgets and economic strife.

Then they came for . . . who will it be next? Might it be you and yours?

Who will be left to speak out for you?

The fight for workers rights in Wisconsin is an issue that should concern all working Americans. Unions there have agreed to the severe cuts proposed by Governor Scott Walker, but still he refuses to move on ending their right to collective bargaining. Efforts there to cloak union busting as responsible fiscal policy are nothing more than the most recent attempt to squeeze working Americans in order to pile more into the coffers of our nation’s economic elite.

The origin of the demise of the American worker goes back more than 30 years. It was conceived in the stagflation of the 1970s and born out of the anti-labor policies of Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan’s 1981 firing of 13,000 striking air traffic controllers that was the shot heard around the world, the shot that started the war against labor that continues to this day.

Reagan was an anti-labor zealot who stacked the NRLB (National Labor Relations Board) with management types who were against unions. The result was an NRLB that sided with employers 75% of the time, a marked increase from the 33% rate under Nixon. Under Reagan the labor department was turned into an anti-labor department; OSHA was cut by one-third; training programs were cut back; he tried to lower the minimum wage for youths and even attempted to replace thousands of federal employees with temporary workers who would not be protected by a union.

Things weren’t as bad under George Bush Sr., but ignoring what Ross Perot called the “giant sucking sounds” from the south, the senior Bush worked diligently to establish free trade under NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). President Bill Clinton signed the agreement into law in December of 1993, and as predicted by Perot, American jobs and money were siphoned off at a record pace.

Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs were lost during Clinton’s presidency, but those losses pale when compared to what happened under George W. Bush. By the end of the junior Bush’s first term, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico had swelled to 12 times its pre-NAFTA level, and 2.8 million manufacturing jobs had been lost. Many factors contributed to these losses, but trade policy that allows unfair conditions and tax policy that promotes offshoring have been major factors leading to the 20 million high-paying manufacturing jobs that were lost between the 1970s and the present.

The impact of the loss of manufacturing jobs cannot be overstated. Their loss marked an American shift from being an exporter nation to having huge trade deficits. And because manufacturing jobs are generally considered to provide the largest job multiplier, actually creating around 2.5 jobs for each manufacturing job, their loss has been particularly burdensome on the economy. As always, it’s middle and working class Americans who paid the price through lost jobs and declining wages as corporation after corporation ramped up profits with cheap overseas labor.

While nobody except Wall St. bankers, corporate CEOs and politicians were safe when the economy collapsed in 2008, it was the construction industry that took the most severe hit. While banks were packing away record profits and bankers record bonuses, their plunder of more than a quarter of the wealth of the middle class took with it 8 million American jobs, and the lion’s share were in the trades. Unemployment in construction hit its highest level on record in March 2010, rising to 27.1%.

Today, construction is still plagued with high unemployment levels, lingering at 22.5% this January. Add to this the deleterious effects of the intrusion of illegal immigrants into the industry, estimated at around 17% of the overall construction workforce, and what was once a sector that promised opportunity for hard working Americans is now a wasteland of skilled craftspeople who can’t afford the houses they worked to build.

So, with manufacturing jobs decimated and construction on the ropes, the wave of Republican governors who swept into office this past November have placed their sights on public employees. Their itchy trigger finger of blame is now pointed at civil servants. Their story is that public employee pensions are the reason behind why so many states can’t balance their budgets; state workers are over compensated and underworked, the story goes.

A hurting public, where unemployment is still at 9.4%, wages have stagnated for 30 years, healthcare is too expensive and prospects too few has been all too quick to accept this fairy tale. Those who want to hide the truth have used these conditions to successfully divert scrutiny and assign blame. But people accept their treachery at a high personal cost that can easily be avoided by looking a bit deeper.

The fact of the matter is that state budgets are in turmoil because of the loss of economic activity, which is the direct result of the bankster’s plunder, the failure of both the President and the Congress to hold anyone accountable, and the GOP’s obstruction of anything that might stimulate job creation. It is true that some pension plans may need to be renegotiated, but the unions have been open to such efforts. And it’s also important to keep in mind that underfunded pensions weren’t as large a concern before the funds were victimized by the Wall St. extraction.

On the topic of public employee pay . . . well, the truth is quite different from the political spin. According to Keith Bender, economic professor at the University of Wisconsin, the compensation of state and local employees are lower than for private sector workers of equal education. His recent study concluded that, on average, their total compensation was 6.8% lower than in comparable private sector jobs.

In the final analysis, whether or not people believe that the maligning of public employees is completely absent of factual basis, they need to see the present attacks for what they are — a play for power. The truth of the matter is that the reason people see public employees as advantaged isn’t because the teachers, firefighters, police, nurses and the rest have done so well; it’s because without unions to represent them, the vast majority of private sector employees have been bled for lower wages and fewer benefits to the point of collapse.

The facts are readily available and the conclusions completely obvious, all that’s needed is the desire to know the truth. The truth is that pay for the average American has stagnated for decades while income for the upper 1% has skyrocketed, rising to a record 17.1% of all income by 2007. This dynamic has created a situation where that top 1% now holds more financial wealth than the bottom 95% of Americans.

Couple this good fortune for the economic elite with the first decline in median household income since 1967 and the slowest rate of job growth since 1945, and it’s pretty easy to understand why people are pissed. But that anger shouldn’t be directed at fellow victims of the plunder. The problem is that 98% of all Americans are being increasingly exploited by a small minority who sit atop the economic pyramid and pull the puppet strings of the politicians on both sides of the aisle. It is in their direction that the ire of the American people should be directed.

Unions were never the problem. In fact, it was unions that gave us most of the benefits now experienced in the workplace. Without unions we wouldn’t have a 40-hour workweek, nor would we have an 8-hour workday. Paid vacation and sick leave, working wages, health benefits, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, and yes — pensions — all were made possible by unions.

It’s time for all Americans to join together and say “enough!” Enough shipping our jobs overseas. Enough concentration of wealth. Enough tax cuts for the wealthy paid for on the backs of American workers. Enough lying and blaming others for the pain caused by the constant squeeze to get more profits. And enough union busting bullshit being sold as unavoidable fiscal discipline!

Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight to restore prosperity to the American middle class. Keep your eye on the ball America, and don’t let any more con men like Scott Walker distract you while they pick your pocket. Remember, if you’re a working American, it’s not a question of “if” they will come for you and yours — it’s a question of “when” — and they just might come for you next.

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